Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant 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 squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
