Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season 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 chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
