Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
