Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
