Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult 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 embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
