Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
