A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
