A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
