A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, 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 tackling different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
