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Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.

“Building an F1 team from nothing, 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 possibility to alter team culture.”

With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort

In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta