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Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, 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 alter organizational mindset.”

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

“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, 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 adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta