Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team 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 since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this 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,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
