A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
