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A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”

With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.

“You have to assume 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,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive

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

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta