Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“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 under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
