🔗 Share this article

Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over 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 made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance 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 passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort

In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta