A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
