A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
