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Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.

“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Task

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.

“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.

“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Team Building Push

In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

Apollo Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta