🔗 Share this article

Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, 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 decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta