A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
