Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
