A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed 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 observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
