A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
