Nick Chester
Cadillac Salary
Chief Technical Officer
Nick Chester's Cadillac F1 Salary as Chief Technical Officer
Nick Chester’s pay as chief technical officer falls in our £500k-2m ($663k-2.7m) base band for technical directors and CTOs. The bonus range of £50k-600k ($66k-795k) makes for an annual total of £550k-2.6m ($729k-3.4m).
Chester has been building the technical side since March 2023. His department is still growing, and Enrico Cardile, who holds the same title at Aston Martin, shares his band. The team has never put a number on Chester’s contract.
Anonymous survey whose very wide technical director pay range sits behind the CTO band shown for Chester.
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Nick Chester's Remit as Cadillac CTO
Chester leads Cadillac’s technical development across design, aerodynamics and engineering delivery, so the car itself is his department’s work. He answers to team principal Marcin Budkowski, who replaced Graeme Lowdon in August 2026.
His Formula E years matter more than they would have a decade ago. He spent them at Mercedes and then McLaren, where energy management and systems control decide races, and F1’s 2026 cars lean far harder on electrical power than their predecessors. Pat Symonds, his old Enstone colleague, advises the team as a consultant.
Ripon Grammar School article on Chester's move into electric racing and his wider engineering career.
Secondary chronology of Chester's roles at Simtek, Arrows, Enstone and in Formula E.
Cadillac's September 24, 2026 release confirming Chester as CTO and announcing three senior technical hires.
Sky Sports guide to Cadillac's 2026 launch that lists Chester among the team's senior technical staff.
Where Chester's Band Sits Among F1 Technical Directors
Pat Fry at Williams and Tim Goss at Racing Bulls hold the same CTO title as Chester, and both sit on £500k-2m ($663k-2.7m) among F1 technical staff. James Allison is in that band too at Mercedes, a team with far more seasons and results behind it than Cadillac.
Nick Chester's Three Decades in F1 Engineering
Chester went through Simtek and Arrows to nearly two decades at Enstone, then spent three years in Formula E before joining the Andretti project that became Cadillac.
Chester's Technical Group Within Cadillac
Chester has the highest band among Cadillac‘s staff pages. Chief race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros is on £180k-350k ($239k-464k) and consultant Pat Symonds on £150k-500k ($199k-663k). More senior engineers are on the way, because Craig Skinner, Eric Blandin, and Tim Lean were announced on September 24, 2026 and will join in the coming months.
Nick Chester Cadillac FAQs
Nick Chester is Cadillac’s chief technical officer, in charge of design, aerodynamics and engineering delivery. He joined the Andretti project that became Cadillac in March 2023 and took the CTO title in 2025, after spells as technical director at Lotus and Renault.
Nick Chester’s Formula E years gave him experience of energy management and systems control, which count for more in F1 now that the 2026 cars rely far more on electrical power. He joined Mercedes in the series in July 2020 and stayed through its switch to McLaren in 2022.
Chester runs Cadillac’s technical department day to day as chief technical officer, while Pat Symonds is an executive engineering consultant. Symonds advises on technical and operational questions across aerodynamics, car handling and power units, but he doesn’t manage the department or its engineers.
Nick Chester earns a base salary of £500k-2m ($663k-2.7m) on F1 Salaries’ band for a CTO. A bonus of £50k-600k ($66k-795k) would lift his year to £550k-2.6m ($729k-3.4m). Cadillac hasn’t published his contract, so where he falls in that band isn’t known.
March 2023 is when Nick Chester joined, as Andretti hired him to run the technical side of the F1 project that became Cadillac. That was three years before the team’s first race. His chief technical officer title came later, in 2025, so the joining date and the role start are different.