A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
