Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
