Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
