Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
