Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
