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Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved 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 understand the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”

With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive

In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building 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 power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta