Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
