Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
