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A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building 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 won't have the chance to alter team culture.”

With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive

In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, 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 hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta