Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
