A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented 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 want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
