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Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when considering the experience.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”

With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Push

In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta