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A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.

“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”

With every 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 a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push

In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the project at a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta