Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know 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 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 monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
