A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
