A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, 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 various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
