Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
