Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
