Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume 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 noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
