A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
