Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team 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 you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect 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 structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
