A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit 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 sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
