A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
