🔗 Share this article

Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Drive

In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.

NASA Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta