Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
