Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging 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 Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
