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Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.

“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort

In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the mission in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta