A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta