A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
