A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
