Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
