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Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.

“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive

In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Model

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta