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Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”

With every day that passes focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort

In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project across a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta