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Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.

“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Task

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”

With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta