A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
