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Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.

“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, 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 chance to transform team culture.”

With each day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission at a different facilities.

“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta