A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
