Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
