A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
