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A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress 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, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.

“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”

With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

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 range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta