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A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.

“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”

With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Push

In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta