Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, 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 we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
