Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
