🔗 Share this article

Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.

“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta