A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
