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Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.

“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”

With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.

“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta