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Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”

With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.

Space Mission Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta