Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing 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 sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand 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 embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
