Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project 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 technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume 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,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
