A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne 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 technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging 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 implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
