Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
