Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
