Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
