Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
