Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
