Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
