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Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.

“Creating an F1 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 don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

NASA Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta