Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
