A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
