🔗 Share this article

Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when considering the ride.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”

With every day that passes minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive

In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta