Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
