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Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”

With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.

“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

NASA Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project at a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta