Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, 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 hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
