A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
