A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One 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 possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
