Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
