A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building 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 power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
