Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
