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Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.

“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta