A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
