A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“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 established team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
