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Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.

“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each day that passes focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push

In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.

“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.

Apollo Inspiration

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”

The Future

The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta