Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal 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 doing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
