Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
