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A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.

“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta