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A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort

In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta