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A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.

“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push

In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta