Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
