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Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.

“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”

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

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Drive

In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Model

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand 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 implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta