Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit 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 monumental task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon 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 wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
