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Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”

With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Push

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta