Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, 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 conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
