A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove 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 want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
