A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
