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Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”

With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point 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 just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, instead of 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 mission in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta