Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One 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 rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project in 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 leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
