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A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.

“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”

With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Drive

In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

NASA Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta