Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
