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Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”

With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.

Space Mission Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta