Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
