Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
