Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
