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Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”

With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort

In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta