🔗 Share this article

Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”

With every day that passes focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Push

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta