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A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”

With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive

In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta