Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team 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.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
