A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
