A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble 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. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
