Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
