Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
