Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad 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 turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, 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 akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
