A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
