Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Nick 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. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
