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Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”

With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort

In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta