A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
