Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
