Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days 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 made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
