Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
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