Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
