A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
