Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
