Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
