Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
