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Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Push

In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

Space Mission Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta