A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
