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Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”

With every day that passes minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Push

In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta