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Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.

“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.

“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort

In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta