Approximately one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
