A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
