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Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.

“Creating an grand prix 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 minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort

In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta