A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble 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 taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
