A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
