A little more than a full year previously 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 organization from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
