A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“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,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
