A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne 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 achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
