A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta