A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
