Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta