A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition 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
