Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
