Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
