Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 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 made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
