Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta