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Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

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

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive

In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.

NASA Inspiration

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, 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 decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta