Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held 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 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
