Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
