Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
