A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred 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 monumental task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
