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Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing 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 challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.

“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort

In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta