Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly 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 group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
