Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing 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 never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “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 stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
