Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
