Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work 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 remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
