Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
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 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
