Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, 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 transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
