Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
