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Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort

In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.

NASA Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta