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A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an grand prix 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 change cultural approach.”

With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.

“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Push

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Model

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta