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Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Task

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta