Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
