A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process 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 center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
