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A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.

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 take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.

“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With every day that passes focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.

“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project at a multiple sites.

“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta