A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
