Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, 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. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
