A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough 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 implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
