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A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”

With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.

“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort

In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta