Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race 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 America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
