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Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Push

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

Space Mission Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta