Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first 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 endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
