Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
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 range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
