A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
