A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
