Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, 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, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
