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Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Drive

In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta