Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
