A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown 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 take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
