Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new 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 stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
