A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, 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 Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
