A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
