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A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.

“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Push

In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta