🔗 Share this article

A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.

“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push

In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta