Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
