Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, 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 variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
