Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
