Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
