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A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.

“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive

In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta