A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
