Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
