A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely 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 given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
