Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
