Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
