Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
