Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a hectic work rate 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 are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
