A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
