A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, 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 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
