Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
