Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
