A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
