Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
