Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
