🔗 Share this article

Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing 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 aware there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”

With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive

In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta