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Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.

“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”

With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort

In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”

The Future

The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta