Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
