A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult 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 embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
