Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
