Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
