A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
