Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project 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 gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
