Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
