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Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.

“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”

With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a different facilities.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta