A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
