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A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.

“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.

NASA Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta