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Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”

With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.

“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta