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Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with around three months 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 never be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the ride.

“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”

With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive

In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

NASA Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program across a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta