Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
