Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
