Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
