Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
