Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
