Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
