A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
