Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face 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 these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
