Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
