A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, 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 come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
