A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show 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 doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
