A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
