Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of 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 variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
