Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
