Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia 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 conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing 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 established team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
