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Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”

With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.

“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive

In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta