Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘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 championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
