Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
