A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
