A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
