A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
