A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
