Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut 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 monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
