Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
