Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
