Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
