Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
