Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
