Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
