Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
