A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
