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A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.

“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.

Apollo Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta