Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating 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 well-set team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
