Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
