Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
