🔗 Share this article

Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”

With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive

In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta