Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
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 approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
