Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
