A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
