🔗 Share this article

A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 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 enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta