Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
