A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
