Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
