Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
