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A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.

“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Challenge

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”

With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations 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,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Push

In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”

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 at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta