A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
