Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
