Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
