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Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.

“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Push

In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.

Space Mission Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta