Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
