Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
