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Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Task

Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta