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A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta