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Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Push

In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

Space Mission Model

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this agile 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 American Colton Herta