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Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.

“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”

With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Effort

In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.

Apollo Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta