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Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.

“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team 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 recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Push

In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.

Space Mission Model

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta