A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
