Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
