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A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Task

The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”

With each day that passes minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort

In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.

Space Mission Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta