Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
