Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
