Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac 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, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
