Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
