Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point 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 simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta