A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
