Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted 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, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought 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 that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
