A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work 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 stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
