Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
