A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
