Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track 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 conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
