Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
