Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
