Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant 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 Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
