Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
