Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip 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 America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect 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,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
