Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
