A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building 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 organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
