A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit 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 never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
