A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
