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Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.

“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”

With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new 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 this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta