A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
