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A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.

“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Drive

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why 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 overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta