A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
