A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
