A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
