Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
