Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac 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, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
