A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
