Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
