Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
