Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand 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 a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
