Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
