Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, 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 existing team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
