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Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with just over 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 sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta