Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta