Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred 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 sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be 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 finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough 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, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
