Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
