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A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.

“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.

Space Mission Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project across a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta