Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing 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 the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
