A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment 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. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
