A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
