Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
