Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
