A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, 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 change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, 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 adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
