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Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when considering the experience.

“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”

With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push

In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a different facilities.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta