Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
