A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
