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A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.

“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.

NASA Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta