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Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”

With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta