A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
