A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“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 feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
