Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
