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Approximately one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

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 core ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.

“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Effort

In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta