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A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort

In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

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 on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta