Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe 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 taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
