Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
