Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
