Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
