Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
