A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time 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 adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
