Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
