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Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”

With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.

Space Mission Model

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, 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 non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.

“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta