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A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.

“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”

With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.

NASA Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta