Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume 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,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
