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A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive

In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta