A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
