Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
