Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
