A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
