🔗 Share this article

A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.

“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“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 feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive

In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta