Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
