A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
