A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
