Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
