Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
