A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented 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 command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face 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. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
