A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
