Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long 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 considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume 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,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
