Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
