A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, 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 various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
