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A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the ride.

“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.

“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort

In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.

NASA Inspiration

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta