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A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.

“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”

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

“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push

In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. 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 decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta