A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
