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Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”

With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.

“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive

In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta