A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
