A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
