A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta