Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
