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Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”

With each day that passes minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push

In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.

NASA Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the program in a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta