A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
