A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 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 won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
