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Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”

With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Push

In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

NASA Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.

“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta