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Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.

“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”

With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.

“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 achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Drive

In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have 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 with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta