A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating 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 have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
