Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, 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 made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
