🔗 Share this article

A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.

“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Task

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.

Space Mission Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the project at a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta