A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
