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A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.

“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort

In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”

The Future

The success of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta