A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
