🔗 Share this article

A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.

“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”

With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta