Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, 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 sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
