Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
