A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
