A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
