A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
