Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission 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 consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
