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Approximately one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. 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 US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing 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 sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.

“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort

In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta