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A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.

“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”

With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort

In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta