A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building 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 don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view 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. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
