A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
