Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect 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 Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
