A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, 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 journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
