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A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Australia

At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”

With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.

“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta