A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing 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 task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
