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A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Opportunity

The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Drive

In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

Apollo Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta