A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
