A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 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
