A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
