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Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.

“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”

With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive

In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta