🔗 Share this article

A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.

“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort

In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta