A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
