Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
