Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
