A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this 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 around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
