Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
