Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
