A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, 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 chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
