A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia 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 task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport 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 thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
