Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne 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 aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team 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 quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have 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 remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce 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 complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
