Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
