Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix 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 won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
