Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One 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 won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
