A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. 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 that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
