A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
