A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
