Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
