Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
