Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
