Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 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 come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
