Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
