Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of 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 various components of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
