Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
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 priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
