Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action 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 a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
