Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac 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 CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
