Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
