Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural 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 task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
