Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
