Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots 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, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
