Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around three months 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 monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“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 feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
