Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
