Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
