A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work 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 finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
