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A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”

With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive

In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.

NASA Model

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta