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A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.

“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”

With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.

“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 achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort

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

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta