A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base 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, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
