Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, 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 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“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 tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
