Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
