Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed 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 difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
