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Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”

With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort

In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta