Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
