A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut 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 monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
