A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
