A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
