Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted 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, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing 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 established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
