Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
