A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team 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 has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
