Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, 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 complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
