A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut 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 challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
