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Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta