A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
