Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over 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 advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling various components of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
