Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
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 approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
