A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult 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 usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
