Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
