A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
