Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment 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 feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
