Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough 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, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
