Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race 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 US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac 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 chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
