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A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.

“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Task

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”

With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Push

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta