Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
