Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
