A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
