Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
