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A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”

With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.

“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort

In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “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’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta