Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
