A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, 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 team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
