A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
