A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“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 won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
