Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
