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A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Push

In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Inspiration

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta