A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
