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Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.

“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”

With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated 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. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort

In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”

The Future

The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta