Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin 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 protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
