Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be 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 stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
