Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds 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 embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar 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.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
