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Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta