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A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.

“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”

With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the program at a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta