A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
