Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“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 don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
