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A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Push

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta