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A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”

With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.

Apollo Inspiration

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission in a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta