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A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.

“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne 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 merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Drive

In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”

To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a variety of locations.

“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 travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta