A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix 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 existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
