A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
