A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
