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Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.

“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive

In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.

NASA Inspiration

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta