Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
