A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid 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 the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
