Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
