A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
