Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
