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A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.

“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”

With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort

In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta