Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
