A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
