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Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”

With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push

In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “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’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project in a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta