A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult 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 embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
