A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
