Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal 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 are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task 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. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
