A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over 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 sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’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 personnel now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
