Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
