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A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta