Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
