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A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit 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 sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort

In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta